RRND Email Full Text (Scheduled)

  • Amazon in talks to invest $10 billion in OpenAI and supply its Trainium chips

    Source: Engadget

    “Amazon is in discussions with OpenAI to invest $10 billion in the company while supplying more of its AI chips and cloud computing services, according to The Financial Times. The deal would push OpenAI’s valuation over $500 billion but is likely to raise more questions about the company’s circular investment agreements involving chips and data centers. The two companies are also in talks about the possibility of OpenAI helping Amazon with its online marketplace, similar to deals it has made with Etsy, Shopify and Instacart. However, any agreement still wouldn’t allow Amazon to market OpenAI’s most advanced models on its developer cloud platform, as Microsoft holds the exclusive rights to those until the 2030s.” (12/17/25)

    https://www.engadget.com/ai/amazon-in-talks-to-invest-10-billion-in-openai-and-supply-its-trainium-chips-103653151.html?src=rss

  • France: Louvre workers vote to extend a strike as the museum partially reopens

    Source: Seattle Times

    “Employees at the Louvre Museum voted to extend a strike that has disrupted operations at the world’s most visited museum, though the attraction partially opened Wednesday to allow visitors to enjoy the ‘Mona Lisa’ and other highlights. The museum said that visitors have started entering the building, where they had access to a limited ‘masterpiece route’ which includes Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Mona Lisa’ and the famous Venus de Milo. … Union workers are protesting chronic understaffing, building deterioration and recent management decisions — pressures intensified by a brazen crown jewels heist in October.” (12/17/25)

    https://archive.is/w52rP

  • Poll: Trump’s economic approval hits new low at 36%

    Source: National Public Radio [US state media]

    “During President Trump’s first term, the economy was a relative strength of his. During the 2024 presidential campaign, his promises to lower prices in a country grappling with post-COVID inflation propelled him back into office. But toward the end of his first year in office this term, just 36% of Americans approve of his handling of the economy, according to the latest NPR/PBS News/Marist poll. It’s his worst mark in the six years that Marist has been asking the question. The only time in that span that Americans had a similarly negative view of a president’s handling of the economy in the poll was in February 2022, when Joe Biden was president.” (12/17/25)

    https://www.npr.org/2025/12/17/nx-s1-5645003/trump-poll-economy-approval

  • EU drops 2035 combustion engine ban as global EV shift faces reset

    Source: Reuters

    “The European Commission unveiled a plan on Tuesday to drop the EU’s effective ban on new combustion-engine cars from 2035 after pressure from the region’s auto sector, marking the bloc’s biggest retreat from its green policies in recent years. The move, which still needs approval from EU governments and the European Parliament, would allow continued sales of some non-electric vehicles. Carmakers in regional industrial powerhouse Germany and in Italy had sought easing of the rules. The EU executive appears to have bowed to calls from carmakers to keep selling plug-in hybrids and range extenders that burn fuel as they struggle to compete against Tesla and Chinese electric vehicle makers.” (12/16/25)

    https://archive.is/zN9jH

  • Judge lets Trump’s ballroom construction proceed

    Source: Politico

    “A federal judge on Tuesday turned down preservationists’ request to halt President Donald Trump’s $300 million White House ballroom project, concluding that allowing below-ground construction to continue in the coming weeks was unlikely to produce irreparable harm to those opposed to the plan. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon denied the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s request for a temporary restraining order, but said he would hear arguments early next year about whether to issue a longer-term preliminary injunction against the project. Leon, a George W. Bush appointee, also said the Trump administration must follow through on a pledge to submit the project to the National Capital Planning Commission by the end of this year.” (12/16/25)

    https://archive.is/dJcLp

  • Occupied Jerusalem: Israeli regime to advance plans for 9,000 squats

    Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]

    “Israeli authorities are expected to advance plans to build 9,000 new housing units in an illegal [squat] on the site of the abandoned Qalandiya airport in occupied East Jerusalem, in another attempt to cut off Palestinian lands from each other and block any possibility of a contiguous Palestinian state ever emerging. The so-called Atarot neighbourhood in northern East Jerusalem, reminiscent of the E1 plan to undermine Palestinian statehood, is to be discussed and have its outlines approved on Wednesday by the District Planning and Building Committee, according to Israeli group Peace Now. … It would build an Israeli enclave in an area where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians live in close proximity, with the aim of blocking development in a key area and further damaging the likelihood of a sovereign Palestinian state being established.” (12/17/25)

    https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/12/17/israel-to-advance-plans-for-9000-houses-in-occupied-east-jerusalem


  • The MAGA Crack-Up Is Overrated. MAGA Is Here to Stay.

    Source: The New Republic
    by Brynn Tannehill

    “There is an emerging conventional wisdom that MAGA is eating itself alive with internecine warfare between various politicians, pundits, thought leaders. People also point to the diminution of Trump as a tired, spent force as a reason for celebration. They want hope in a time when there seems like none, and this jockeying for the crown even as the king falls asleep in his chair while his minions fawn over his vitality and vigor seems to offer it. … What defines MAGA is still there, and won’t go away for the foreseeable future. If you reduce the equation to the simplest terms, you have the Trump voters who pay attention to the chaos and those who don’t. No matter how you slice it, neither group is going to suddenly start voting for Democrats, regardless of which monkey wins the poo-flinging contest.” (12/17/25)

    https://newrepublic.com/article/204494/maga-carlson-shapiro-owens-crackup-overrated

  • Keeping the Towers Open When Government Closes

    Source: The Daily Economy
    by Iain Murray

    “On most days, America’s air traffic control system is invisible. The radar screens flicker, the controllers thread needles as planes approach and depart, and millions of passengers move through the sky supported by a grid they never see. We are reminded of its fragility only when something breaks. The most recent federal government shutdown provided just such a reminder. The system strained not because of storms or technological failure, but because Washington stopped paying its bills. Controllers continued working without pay, modernization projects halted, safety inspectors were furloughed, and as a result, flights were canceled. This was an institutional failure. If the skies darken whenever Congress deadlocks, the problem is not aviation, but governance.” (12/17/25)

    https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/keeping-the-towers-open-when-government-closes/

  • Emerson and the Moral Imperative to Oppose Antisemitism

    Source: Mindset Shifts
    by Barry Brownstein

    “In America, antisemitism has gone mainstream. Both the woke right and woke left are poisoning their followers with their hatred. Whether people like Candace Owens personally believe the hatred they spew is justified doesn’t matter; their followers believe it is. Vanishing are the guardrails of social sanctions that restrain hatred of others. … Perhaps this is wishful thinking, but I believe the majority of Americans and Australians are not antisemitic. Yet the majority are staying silent. In his essay ‘Spiritual Laws’ Emerson wrote, ‘Human character evermore publishes itself. The most fugitive deed and word, the mere air of doing a thing, the intimated purpose, expresses character. If you act you show character; if you sit still, if you sleep, you show it.'” (12/17/25)

    https://mindsetshifts.substack.com/p/emerson-and-the-moral-imperative

  • Let’s bake the liberal sourdough

    Source: hypertext
    by David Dagan

    “Yes, Jonathan V. Last, liberalism needs to revisit its recipe. No, Ross Douthat, we should not give up on the starter.” (12/17/25)

    https://hypertext.niskanencenter.org/p/lets-bake-the-liberal-sourdough

  • A Texas News Vlogger Asks SCOTUS To Decide Whether Criminalizing Journalism Is “Obviously Unconstitutional”

    Source: Reason
    by Jacob Sullum

    “Priscilla Villarreal was not arrested for ‘merely asking questions,’ Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton insists in a brief urging the Supreme Court to reject the Laredo news vlogger’s petition for review of her First Amendment case. Yet that is literally what happened to Villarreal in 2017, and the precedent set by that incident poses a threat to journalists across the country. Villarreal, who operates a locally popular news outlet on Facebook, alleges that local officials, annoyed by her ‘unfiltered style’ and periodic criticism of them, conspired to punish her by treating her journalism as a crime. After months of looking for ‘any excuse’ to arrest her, she says, they settled on an obscure, rarely used Texas law, located in a chapter targeting ‘Abuse of Office,’ that makes it a felony to ‘solicit’ nonpublic information from a government official ‘with intent to obtain a benefit.'” (12/17/25)

    https://reason.com/2025/12/17/a-texas-news-vlogger-asks-scotus-to-decide-whether-criminalizing-journalism-is-obviously-unconstitutional/

  • European Alarmism Could Fuel a US Backlash to NATO

    Source: The American Conservative
    by Eldar Mamedov

    “When NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte warns, as he did last week, that the alliance must prepare ‘for the scale of war our grandparents or great-grandparents endured,’ he is not merely outlining a defense posture. He intends to commit more American blood and treasure, backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. taxpayer, for an endless war in Europe against Russia. But Rutte could, ultimately, help bring about the opposite: an American backlash to NATO that sees a reduction of U.S. commitment to the Western alliance.” (12/17/25)

    https://www.theamericanconservative.com/european-alarmism-could-fuel-a-u-s-backlash-to-nato/

  • Pranked Biden official exposes lie that Ukraine war was inevitable

    Source: Responsible Statecraft
    by Branko Marcetic

    “When it comes to the Ukraine war, there have long been two realities. One is propagated by former Biden administration officials in speeches and media interviews, in which Russian President Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion had nothing to do with NATO’s U.S.-led expansion into the now shattered country, there was nothing that could have been done to prevent what was an inevitable imperialist land-grab, and that negotiations once the war started to try to end the killing were not only impossible, but morally wrong. Then there is the other, polar opposite reality that occasionally slips through when officials think few people are listening, and which was recently summed up by former Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Europe at the National Security Council Amanda Sloat, in an interview with Russian pranksters whom she believed were aides to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.” (12/17/25)

    https://responsiblestatecraft.org/ukraine-nato-sloat/

  • Birthright Citizenship Just Makes Sense

    Source: Libertarian Institute
    by Thomas Eddlem

    “There are lots of historical precedents for large numbers of multigenerational non-citizens in a country. None of them are attractive examples to follow. There were the Jews in ancient Egypt, the Huns and the Vandals in the Roman Empire, Irish Catholics under penal laws of English occupation from the seventeenth to twentieth centuries, and more recently black tribes in apartheid South Africa. Sure, most of those empires continued on the maps for centuries afterwards, but they all endured massive civil discord and violent revolts as a result of the arrangement. And yet, among the Republican right, there’s a crusade against birthright citizenship enshrined in the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment …. Jettisoning birthright citizenship would create the same kind of large permanent underclass that caused the violent chaos in the aforementioned empires above.” (12/17/25)

    https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/birthright-citizenship-just-makes-sense

  • Humanity Clings to the Wreckage

    Source: CounterPunch
    by Robert Koehler

    “A hundred deaths, a thousand deaths, quickly turn into ‘collateral damage.’ But the killing of two desperate men, clinging to the wreckage of their boat in the Caribbean – their boat that has just been bombed – rips open the abstraction of military public relations. They’re just ordinary human beings – like you, like me, like our parents and our children – rather than … uh, narco-terrorists. And suddenly this new war the Trump administration has launched is more than just a videogame. Hey, Pete, this is not keeping us safe! Indeed, as I write these words, I picture the so-called Secretary of War clinging to the wreckage himself. Perhaps he’ll eventually realize that war always comes home, that what we do has consequences, that creating peace is a bit more complex than killing the bad guy (and thus preventing him from contradicting the official narrative).” (12/17/25)

    https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/12/17/humanity-clings-to-the-wreckage/

  • Who’s the Dictator – Venezuela’s Maduro or Ukraine’s Zelensky?

    Source: Antiwar.com
    by Roger D Harris

    “Washington brands Nicolás Maduro a dictator, celebrates Volodymyr Zelenskyy as democratic, and sponsors María Corina Machado to achieve regime change in Venezuela rather than promote genuine democracy.” (12/17/25)

    https://original.antiwar.com/roger_harris/2025/12/16/whos-the-dictator-venezuelas-maduro-or-ukraines-zelensky/

  • Crickets from Southern California Republicans on Trump’s Reiner tirade

    Source: Orange County Register
    by Sal Rodriguez

    “Any reasonable person knows that President Donald Trump’s comments on the murder of Rob and Michele Reiner have been, to use a word, deplorable. In a message amplified through official accounts, Trump said Reiner died ‘reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding and incurable affliction … known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.’ Fortunately, some Republicans found this to be a tasteless and irresponsible thing to say. … So, I figured I’d ask local Republican members of Congress what they think. Their response: crickets.” (12/16/25)

    https://archive.is/ZGnM0

  • November’s Weak Jobs Report Pushes the Fed Toward More Monetary Stimulus

    Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
    by Ryan McMaken

    “Although the Fed lacked employment data for October and November during its most recent FOMC policy meeting, the Fed was likely pushing its new policies while assuming more soft employment data. The latest data from the BLS further helps the Fed, politically speaking, in its efforts to justify further cuts to the target policy interest rate even though price inflation measures remain near three percent, and are not — as the Fed has repeatedly insisted — hurrying back to the stated two-percent inflation target.” (12/16/25)

    https://mises.org/mises-wire/novembers-weak-jobs-report-pushes-fed-toward-more-monetary-stimulus

  • Removing the Sword of the Federal Judiciary

    Source: Independent Institute
    by William J Watkins, Jr.

    “The Bill of Rights exists to protect the people and the states from an overreaching federal government. Since the 1920s, the federal courts have turned the Bill of Rights into a weapon to use against the people and the states. December 15 — Bill of Rights Day — should remind Americans that the first 10 amendments were intended to restrict rather than augment federal power. In our upside-down world today, we associate the Bill of Rights with landmark Supreme Court cases restricting state action. Modern Americans express shock when learning that the Bill of Rights was intended to apply only to the federal government.” (12/16/25)

    https://www.independent.org/article/2025/12/16/removing-the-sword-of-the-federal-judiciary/

  • Do I have to? Urrgh!

    Source: The Price of Liberty
    by Nathan Barton

    “We here at TPOL generally like Whoopi Goldberg … as an actress when she played Guinan on Star Trek: The Next Generation. That was a long time ago. But the good will from her appearances has long since evaporated, except for what she gets that we provide to any human being. Regardless of their faults. Including what we are tempted to say one of Goldberg’s greater ones: an inability to understand simple English declarative statements, combined with a firm belief that her political enemies are all monsters. So we are placed in a quandry: for once we agree with her. Whoopi Goldberg is recently reported as saying, ‘I’m not gonna let Secretary Kennedy tell me what vaccines to take.’ Amen … we here at TPOL are totally agreement with Whoopi Goldberg. The government should not be telling us what we can put into our bodies.” (12/16/25)

    https://thepriceofliberty.org/2025/12/16/do-i-have-to-urrgh/